State craft of machiavelli

LIVING from 1469 to 1527, Machiavelli saw
what we may regard as the culmination of the
Italian Renaissance. He was brought up
while the Medici family were masters of Florence
--while Lorenzo the Magnificent was gaining for
the city a strategic position in Italian politics. He
received a gentlemanly education, studied the clas-
sics, and learned at any rate to read and write in
Latin, without gaining any particular reputation
as a man of scholarship. His mentality is essentially
that of his time and circle, and it is one of the pur-
poses of the following essay to restore him to his
context, from which he is too often and too easily
divorced.
He was twenty-five when the first French invas-
ion of Italy took place in 1494, and from this
moment Florence entered upon a tumultuous his-
tory; for the Medici were driven out and a republic
was proclaimed, and Savonarola became a pre-
dominant figure in the city for four years. Machia-
velli's own chief political experience, however, co-
incides with the period of the second French in-
vasion, 1499-1512. In 1498 he had been made
Secretary of the Ten and besides writing thousands
of official letters for this executive council.